I wouldn't work with less than an 8" monitor. 8" monitors are convienent, and perfect for color and exposure evaluation in the field. But as Stephen stated, the 8" monitors aren't going to show you the full resolution of what you're getting in the progressive modes. Not to mention that the small screen may make it easy to miss critical image evaulation details like focus.

I would recommend that for critical applications, a 13" monitor would be the best solution. And a CRT monitor at that. While Stephen's suggestion of using a laptop to monitor the image is certainly convienent, a LCD can't be trusted for critical image evaluation. A CRT is required for critical color and exposure values.

doing a quick shot out in a bright sunny day with an Orange Charger, a red outfited model, and a male model in blue jeans, did NOT have this blue wash.

however, once you stray from anythind above or below 2, you WILL get colour bleeding on exteme contrasted shots with lower detailed settings.

the charger being orange and the sky being bright white blue with the ND at 1/8 gave SOME bleedthough with the colour temp at -3, Boosted the ND to 64, opened the iris a little and problem solved.
this was teh only shot with bleedthrough

nothing else was affected at -3 temp

cinamea matrix was set, but cinegamma was OFF. as i didnt have time to mess with chromas and shifts, i couldnt risk ruining the shot as i was in another state.

You stated "once you stray from above or below 2. Please specify. Above or below 2 what? Which value are you manipulating. The chroma, the temp, the ped?

Lower detail settings are still preferable I assure you. At least -3 Detail. preferably more. Such as -4 or -5 in Thin mode.

In my experience, it is preferable NOT to vary the color temperature value to the - side. That is to say, be very very cautious when it comes to warming the image. I know everyone likes the "warm" picture and thinks that the "warm" picture feels more organic or whatever. But warm Standard Definition video is a very dangerous thing. It skews the color to a very bad side or the video sprectum. Once skin tones go too red, you'll have a really hard time getting them corrected to the proper "natural tone". Even though the blue or colder appearance is what this thread seems to be attempting to avoid, I would strongly recommend not trying to fix blue by shifting it red. Proper white balance should do the trick. If not, use the temp adjustment sparingly.

For PAL users, I would highly recommend using Normal Colour 2 instead of Cine-Matrix. The camera and format just can't handle over the top saturation. If you're colors don't feel saturated enough don't worry about it. It's better to push the color in post where you can carefully monitor the values of what the format can handle, instead of getting artifact ridden, blocky colors.

Indeed the PAL standard handles color better than NTSC. But it's still being put through the DCT compression of DV25. So go easy...